Speed Racer

Perennially popular anime SPEED RACER makes the jump from cartoon to live action, courtesy of the Wachowski Brothers. Unfortunately, these once-heralded directors showed signs of being a one-hit wonder with their preposterous MATRIX sequels, and this film pushes even further towards that description. Using a dizzying visual style that can only be compared to exploding paint cans, the film vainly tries to revolutionize “cool.” And in doing this, they forgot to add in the fun that would seem obvious when adapting a kid’s cartoon show.

Speed Racer (Emile Hirsch) is a young hot-rod making history on the racetrack. Driven to succeed by the memory of his dead brother Rex, Speed only knows how to race and he does it well. But when he refuses a deal from a monopolistic CEO (Roger Allam), he finds himself and his entire family (including father John Goodman and mother Susan Sarandon) in the mercy of the powerful company. Determined to destroy the corporations’ hold on the world of racing, Speed teams with the mysterious Racer X (Matthew Fox) and girlfriend Trixie (Christina Ricci) to defeat the corporate-sponsored drivers race by race, starting with the same treacherous rally that took the life of his brother.

There’s a lot of drama in a movie supposedly aimed toward children; hardly surprising, looking at who’s responsible for the film. The Wachowskis seem to forget they were making a fun action movie; most of the film is spent on long dramatic scenes surrounding each member of the Racer family that slows momentum to a complete standstill. There is so much time spent on studying the inner working of Mom and Pops Racer that Speed seems a mere afterthought until well into the film. As a result, the film is easily a half hour too long and the action sequences never quite rouse the viewer out of the distant stupor the rest of the film puts them into.

Not that any inkling of sense or understanding can be gotten from the action sequences. The film’s color scheme, obviously the filmmakers’ attempt to create a real-life anime is even more dizzying and headache-inducing than their 2D counterpart. The editing is so fast and the movement so mind-boggling (in the worst way possible) that we are forced to wait until the race ends to get a semblance of what happened. The only sequence that elicits any real excitement is one of the few hand-to-hand combat scenes in the film, and also one of the few that are devoid of extensive special effects. Even if that sequence does start off with an act that is either a strangely-placed homage to James Bond or evidence that the Wachowskis have simply run out of ideas.

The cast certainly doesn’t do any favors, though they aren’t given much to begin with. As Speed, Hirsch clearly looks the part but looks and sounds awkward when forced to deliver the stereotypical “let’s see what I can do” lines to his competing racers. Sarandon and Goodman invest into their characters far too much, with their teary-eyed performances out of place in the bright colors and flashing lights. And as Speed’s younger brother Spritle, Paul Litowsky finds himself stuck with some of the least funny comedic relief dialogue seen in quite some time and gives the worst child performance this side of Spencer Breslin. Only Ricci makes a positive impression, mostly due to the fact that she is the only element of the movie that looks like an anime convincingly brought to life.

If the Wachowskis wanted to make a serious action drama about racing, they shouldn’t have chosen SPEED RACER as their inspiration. Their heavy melodramatics conflict wildly with the Candyland/Japanese infused world they set the film in. While some will likely see this film as the next phase in the evolution of cool, thanks to its bloated script and completely incorrect sense of self importance, there’s only one thing to say: SPEED RACER drags.

*1/2/****